If I Cannot Forgive Then I Will Not Forget

Aleah sat there unmoving on the ground as she felt her body fighting against itself. Her body was practically covered in the filth of the street at this point, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Couldn't bring herself to realize just how far she had fallen. All she could manage to understand in this moment was that the treachery had not in fact yet ended and that she would never be able to get even a sliver of revenge. She had hesitated out of fear, not out of love, no not that either. Perhaps she had hesitated because of something as simple as the knowledge that it would be going against everything she had ever been taught. Good girls weren't supposed to enact revenge, they weren't even supposed to think of it and Aleah had always been, above all else a good girl. So how exactly had this happened to her? How was she here right now? This is not what she had been expecting. This is not what she had signed up for. This is not what they had promised her. This is not what he had promised her? How could they? How could he? Was she not…. How? How did this happen? Aleah remembered she had once been as close to a princess as a girl could be without actually being a princess, that is. She was beautiful, smart, caring, kind and loved. Beyond all else, Aleah was certain she was loved. Did her mother, her father, her brothers, her grandparents, her cousins and even the man before her not tell her they loved her? So how had she ended up in an alley just hours before her wedding in the dead of night with her fiancé, the man she adored above all else, the man she had fought for, killed for, bled for, almost died for, holding a sword to her neck. She had done what she was told. She had been good. She had been kind and done everything right. How did that lead her here? Even now she couldn't even pinpoint when she fell into this trap. Into his trap. Yet those last moments as she watched those indigo eyes she had once fawned over lock onto her own piercing straight into her soul as if evaluating her and finding her lacking, she wondered, how did this happen? She didn’t know and so Aleah screamed in indignation, in fury, in pain and in bitterness. Aleah screamed for her family, and she screamed for herself. She screamed and screamed and screamed raising her eyes to the sky above as the sick slick slide of metal tearing skin and bone rang out through the night.